First Ukrainian International Bank (FUIB) has attracted the 1000th client from the agricultural sector in order to become their service provider. It was the farm enterprise Tavria-Skif, one of the leading agrarian producers in the Zaporizhia region. “Anniversary” number of new clients who have entrusted provision of services for their agricultural enterprises to the bank continues to confirm the title of FUIB as one of the top-3 in the nomination “The Best Agricultural Bank” (according to the rating “Investgazeta 2014”) and the winner of the award “Support for small and medium-sized businesses 2014” (according to the newspaper “Business”).

This “anniversary number” becomes particularly meaningful if we take into account the fact that FUIB is a relative newcomer to the agricultural market. Only two years have passed since the bank offered special terms and products to clients from the agricultural sector. This market is quite “overheated” in terms of banking services and it takes a lot of time and efforts to gain the trust of every new client in agriculture. The beginning of the agricultural season 2015 coincided with political instability and currency fluctuations, what, it would seem, should have suspended activeness of banking support of business. However FUIB found a solution by offering farmers of small and medium-sized businesses a financial instrument, which replaces lending that have risen in price – “Avalizing of commercial papers”.

“The product expectedly became very popular among agricultural enterprises: Under the conditions of limited resources, the bill, in fact, becomes the instrument of payments to the suppliers of working capital for sowing and provides deferred payment. The supplier and the customer cover their own demands on a risk-free basis: get a bill issued, conclude a contract for the delivery and the bank acts as a guarantor. At the same time, the price of the bank commercial paper is 3-5 times less than the rate on the loan. Naturally, this instrument immediately became popular among customers. As a result, since the beginning of 2015 FUIB has issued agricultural bills for the amount of more than 100 million UAH. It is particularly valuable for us that the 1000th FUIB's client in agriculture was attracted exactly thanks to our bill avalizing service. This client was a farm enterprise Tavria-Skif, one of the leading agrarian producers in the Zaporizhia region,” notes Olena Rudyk, head of the department on work with small and medium-sized businesses.

“I saw that FUIB is an expert. They are specialists who understand my business well and for this you need to have experience, which cannot be gained “quickly and everywhere”. I very much appreciate when your banker is an assistant, when it understands what is needed and immediately offers an optimal solution at the right moment. We had to ensure the sowing — we were offered a bill for payments to a distributor in order to get a payment delay and to fix the price of the resulting product. No questions arose, since FUIB is a reliable bank, all distributors readily accept bills that were avalized by it as guarantees and they know it well. And equally important, the price of this convenient instrument is many times lower than lending,” Oleh Kaliman, head of the farm enterprise Tavria-Skif, shared his experience.

You can learn more about the benefits of agricultural bills from FUIB by calling the hotline 0 800 501 275, as well as on the website of the bank.